Meanwhile, Erica is reading her own paper quietly.

Yuna was alternating between looking at her own paper, and shooting Thistle worried glances.

Thistle sat and shook, the silence she was so used to, now threatening and daunting. 

She signed at Yuna, asking her what was going on. 

Yuna watched Thistle's hands move, and with a lot of regret in her eyes, mouthed 'sorry!' at her.

Thistle managed to hold back the fear she felt, and reached over the table to tap at Erica.

"What's up?"

Erica looks at her briefly, but her attention is more on the assignment.

Thistle sees her mouth move, but can't read her lips. She taps Erica again, a little more urgently. 

"What?"

Erica looks at Thistle searchingly.

Thistle points at, and then covers her ears. 

She looks to Yuna in frustration.

"Hey. Any clue what her deal is?"

"I- I think she's deaf. They didn't give her a chance to put her hearing aids in."

Yuna remembers Thistle from their shared classes.

"-of course they didn't."

Erica can double up on the work she's doing because this primeval hazing ritual kidnapped them from their beds.

She glares at Margo.

“I could...I don’t know, manufacture something? Or at least conjure it?”

She asks Erica, and not Thistle. 

"Whatever works. Think she can read lips?"

"What is going on!?"

Thistle's voice is a little muddled, and inflects in the wrong place. She's fucking terrified. 

"We have to at least try?" 

Yuna looks saddened, terribly so, by Thistle's plight...but her eyes do drift down to the paper in her hand. 

Erica writes a note and passes it to Thistle.

This is a test/hazing ritual. We'll take care of it, just sit tight.

Thistle reads the note, nods at Erica, and then slumps forward, her head in her hands. 

Then Erica will get to work trying to crack this problem.

Meanwhile:

Dermot is pretty sure he's getting somewhere. They're clearly missing something here- he can't make heads or tails of the equations they need to balance, but it's obvious they don't have all of the parameters they need. If the problem involves multiple locations and a single moment in time, they can skip worrying about weather but they need to account for the size and the acoustics...

Lori's paper is covered in notes she's made on the side, and small equations she's made to try and balance the size of the spell versus containing the effect, but there is just...something that she can't make connect. 

Then she catches Dermot's thoughts...and wants to slam her head into the table. "Yeah...yeah, that would work."

"What would work?"

-dammit. Did she figure it out already? Skye would have.

Lori pushes her paper over to Dermot. "I think you've got the bits I didn't. Which is incredibly annoying." 

"Yeah, sounds like it."

It's not like they have to share.